The Far Horizon Part 2

Thus would he go down to posterity! And to Dominic Iglesias, just now, it seemed very excellent that posterity should know him for the wind-bag hypocrite he essentially was. Securely entrenched behind his own large prosperity, uxoriousness, paternity, had he not counted his, Iglesias', blessings to him; counselling amus.e.m.e.nt, rest, congratulating him on just all that which made for his present distress--namely, his obscure position, his enforced idleness, his absence of human ties, the general meagreness of his state in life? The more he thought of the incident, the more it filled him with indignation and disgust. Therefore, very certainly he would claim his pension; claim an infinitesimal but actual fraction of this man's great wealth; would live long so as to claim it as long as possible, till the paying of it, indeed, should become a weariness to the payer. And he would spend it, too, unquestionably he would. Mr. Iglesias' rare and gracious smile had an almost cruel edge to it.

"The machine shall become a man again," he said. "And the man shall amuse himself. How, I don't yet know, but I will find out. Work has made me dull and inept."

He straightened himself up, tired, yet unbroken, defiant, aware--though the horror of the Outer Darkness was yet upon him--of purpose still militant and unspent.

"Play may make me the reverse of dull and inept. I have always been diligent and methodical. I will continue to be so. This enterprise admits of no delay. I will begin at once, begin to-morrow, to amuse myself."

It is characteristic of the Latin to see things written in fire and blood, which the slower-brained Anglo-Saxon only sees written in red paint--if, indeed, he ever arrives at seeing them written at all. To- night the Latin held absolute sway in Dominic Iglesias. With freedom had come a curious reversion to type. His humour, like his smile, was a trifle cruel. He observed, criticised, judged, condemned unsparingly, all mental courtesies in abeyance. When, therefore, at this juncture the three eyes of the Lovegroves' dining-room gaselier winked slowly, and closed their lids--so to speak--ceasing to watch and to supplicate, he suffered no self-reproach. The good, simple couple were shutting up house and going to bed, he supposed. They sought repose betimes; and, unless supper had been more aggressively cold and heavy than usual, slept, till broad day, a dreamless sleep. Decidedly it was well he had not taken his hat and stepped across to visit them, for, beyond all question, they would not have understood! The voice of London, for instance, meant nothing to them. They had no notion London had a voice. Still less had they any notion she was a prodigious living creature. London was the place where they resided--that was all, and, since the streets are admittedly noisy and dusty, they had taken a house in this genteel and convenient suburb. Of the tremendous life and force of things, miscalled man-made and inanimate, they had no faintest conception. Small wonder they went to bed betimes and slept a dreamless sleep! Thinking of which-- notwithstanding their kindness and affection--they became, just now, to Iglesias as truly astonis.h.i.+ng phenomena in their line as Sir Abel Barking in his. He saw in them merely specimens, though good ones, of the great majority of the British public, a public so overlaid and permeated by convention, so parochial in outlook, so hidebound by social tradition and insular prejudice, that it is really less in touch with everlasting fact than the animals it pets, demoralises, and eats. These at least have instinct, and so are at one with universal nature. In perception, in spontaneity of action, good Mrs. Lovegrove was as an infant compared to her parrot or her pug. So was little Mr. Farge with his sophisticated warblings--so, for that matter, were all the other persons among whom his, Iglesias', lot was cast. His sense of isolation deepened. If amus.e.m.e.nt was his object, most certainly the society of Trimmer's Green would not supply it. He must look further afield for all that.

In the far northwest the last of the sunset had faded; only the cloud remained. Yet the horizon, above the broken line of the house-roofs and chimney-pots, pulsed with light--the very earthly light which, in great cities, flares out when the light of heaven dies, to walk the streets, with much else of doubtful loveliness, till it is shamed by the cold chast.i.ty of dawn. And along with that outflaring, a certain meretricious element introduced itself into the aspect of Trimmer's Green. Across the roadway, the gaslamps showed cones of vivid yet sickly brightness, bringing at regular intervals the sharply indented leaves of the plane trees and the s.h.i.+vering silver of the balsam-poplars into an arresting and artificial distinctness. Between were s.p.a.ces of vacancy and gloom.

And from out such a s.p.a.ce, immediately opposite, slowly emerged a shambling and ungainly figure, in which Dominic Iglesias recognised the third of his fellow-lodgers, Mr. de Courcy Smyth. His acquaintance with the said lodger was of the slightest, since the latter had but recently entered into residence and rarely appeared at meals. Mrs. Porcher habitually referred to him with a pitying respect as "a gentleman very influential in literary and professional circles, but unfortunate in his married life"; ending with a sigh and upward glance of her still fine eyes, as one who could sympathise, having herself been through that gate.

Influential or not, it occurred to Iglesias that the man presented a sorry spectacle enough. For a minute or so he stood aimlessly in the full glare of a gaslamp. His thin, creasy Inverness cape was thrown back, displaying evening dress. He carried a soft grey felt hat in one hand.

His whole aspect was seedy, disappointed, dejected; his face pale and puffy, his spa.r.s.e reddish hair and beard but indifferently trimmed. It was borne in upon Iglesias, moreover, that the man was hungry, that he had not--and that for some time--had enough to eat. Voluntary poverty is among the most beautiful, involuntary poverty among the ugliest, sights upon earth; and to which order of poverty that of de Courcy Smyth belonged, Mr. Iglesias was in no doubt. This was a sordid sight, a sight of discouragement, adding the last touch to the melancholy which oppressed him. The seedy figure crossed the road, fumbled for a minute with a latchkey. Then nerveless footsteps ascended the stairs, pa.s.sed the door, and took their joyless way up and onward to the bed-sitting-room immediately above.

Down below the music had ceased, while sounds arose suggestive of a little playfulness on the part of the two young men in bidding their hostess and Miss Eliza Hart good-night. Very soon the house became silent. But Dominic Iglesias, though tired, was in no humour for sleep.

He drew forward a leather-covered armchair and sat near the open window, in at which came a breathing of night wind. This was soothing, touching his forehead as with delicate pressure of a cool and sympathetic hand; so that, without any sense of surprising transition, he found himself in the garden of the little house in Holland Street, Kensington, once again. The laburnum was in full blossom, and the breeze uplifted the light drooping branches of it, making all their golden glory dance in the suns.h.i.+ne.

There must have been rain in the night, too, for the stone basin was full of water, in which the sparrows were busy was.h.i.+ng, sending up tiny iridescent jets and fountains from their swiftly fluttering wings. It was delicious to Dominic. He felt very safe, very gay. Only a heavy ill- favoured tabby cat came from nowhere. It had designs upon the sparrows.

Twice it climbed stealthily up the broken bricks and gas clinkers. Twice the little boy drove it away. It was not a nice cat. It had a broad white face, deceitful little eyes, and grey whiskers. It declared it only caught sparrows for their good and for the good of the community. It a.s.sured Dominic he was guilty of a grave error of judgment in attempting to interfere. It said a great deal about moral responsibility and the heavy obligations persons of wealth and position owe to themselves.

Just then Pascal Pelletier, carrying a square Huntley Palmer's biscuit tin, containing an infernal machine, under his arm, his angelic countenance radiant in the suns.h.i.+ne, came down the steps from the dining- room window. And, while Dominic ran to greet him, the cat crept back again--its face was the face of Sir Abel Barking, and it made a spring at the sparrows. But the pillar broke and the basin toppled over, pinning it, across the loins, down on to the clinkers under the edge of the stone lip.

"Oh! you've spoilt my garden, you've spoilt my garden!" Dominic cried.

"The basin has fallen. The sparrows will never wash in it any more."

But Pascal Pelletier patted him on the head tenderly.

"Do not weep over the fallen basin, very dear one," he said. "Rather sing aloud Te Deum in praise of the glorious G.o.ddess of Social Revolution who has delivered the enemy of the people into our hands. This is no affair of cat and bird, but of the capitalist and the proletariat on which he battens. So for a little s.p.a.ce let the unholy creature lie there writhing. Let it understand what it is to have a back broken by the weight of an impossible burden. Let it try vainly to drag its limbs from beneath an immovable load. Observe it, let it suffer. Very soon we will finish with it, and explode the iniquitous system it represents. See, in the name of humanity, of labour, of the unknown and unnumbered millions of the martyred poor, I set a match to this good little fuse, and, with the rapidity of thought, blow blasphemous tyrant Capital into a thousand fragments of reeking flesh and splintered bone!"

But to the little boy, words and spectacle alike had become unendurably painful.

"No, no, Pascal, you cannot cure everything that way. It is not just," he cried. And running forward with all his strength he lifted the stone basin off the wounded creature--cat, man, beast of prey, modern financier, be it what it might. He stopped to gather it up in his arms, and, repulsive though it was, to comfort and protect it. But just then came a thunderous rattle and crash knocking him senseless.

Mr. Iglesias sat bolt upright in his chair, uncertain of his ident.i.ty and surroundings, shaken and bewildered.

Upstairs, de Courcy Smyth--spent and stupefied by the writing of a would- be smart critique on the first-night performance of a screaming farce, for one of to-morrow's evening papers--had stumbled, upsetting the fire- irons, as he slouched across his room to bed. Iglesias heard the creak of the wire-wove mattress as the man flung himself down; and that familiar sound restored his sense of actualities. Yet all his mood was changed and softened. The return to childhood had made a strange impression upon him, filling him with a great nostalgia for things apparently lost, but exquisite; and which, having once been, might, though he knew not by what conceivable alchemy of time or chance, once again be. Meanwhile, he must have slept long, for the wind had grown chill. The voice of London, the monstrous mother, had grown weak and intermittent. And the earthly light, pulsing along the horizon, had grown faint, humbled and chastened by the whiteness of approaching dawn.

CHAPTER IV

A quarter-mile range of high unpainted oak paling, well seasoned, well carpentered, innocent of c.h.i.n.k or shrinkage, impervious to the human eye.

Visible above it the domed heads of enormous elm trees steeped in suns.h.i.+ne, rising towards the ample curve of the summer sky. At intervals, with tumultuous rush and scurry, the thud of the hoofs of unseen horses, galloping for all they are worth over gra.s.s. The suck and rub of breeches against saddle-flaps, the rattle of a curb chain or the rings of a bit.

A call, a challenge, smothered exclamations. The long-drawn swish of the polo stick through the air, and the whack of the wooden head of it against ball, or ground, or something unluckily softer and more sentient.

A pause, broken only by distant voices, and the sound, or rather sense, of men and horses in quiet and friendly movement; followed by the tumultuous rush and scurry, and all the moving incidents of the heard, yet unwitnessed, drama over again.

For here it was that gallant and costly game beloved of Oriental princes--rather baldly described to Mr. Iglesias yesterday by the driver of the Hammersmith 'bus as a "kind of hockey on horseback"--in very full swing no doubt. Only unfortunately Iglesias found himself on the wrong side of the palings. And, since he had learned, indirectly, from the observations of the monumental police-sergeant--directing the stream of carriages at the entrance gates--to other would-be spectators, that to the polo ground, as to so much else obviously desirable in this world, there is "no admission except by ticket," on the wrong side of these same palings he recognised he was fated to stay. It was a disappointment, not to say an annoyance. For he had come forth, in accordance with his determination, to make observations and inquiries regarding that same matter of amus.e.m.e.nt. And, since the influence of that which is to be acts upon us almost, if not quite, as strongly as the influence of that which has been, the handsome, eager countenance of young Alaric Barking and the graceful figure of his fair companion, as seen from the 'bustop, occurred very forcibly in this connection to Dominic Iglesias' mind. He would go forth and behold that which they had gone forth to behold. He would witness the sports of the well-born and rich. From these he elected, somewhat proudly, to take his first lessons in the fine art of amus.e.m.e.nt.

So here he was; and here, too--very much here--were the palings, spelling failure and frustration of purpose.

Fortunately unwonted exercise and the pure invigorating atmosphere tended to generate placidity, and agreeable harmony of the mental and physical being. It followed that active annoyance was short-lived. For a minute or two Mr. Iglesias loitered, listening to the moving music of the unseen game. Then, walking onward to the end of the enclosure, where the palings turn away sharply at the left, he crossed the road and made for a wooden bench just there amiably presenting itself. It was pleasant to rest. The walk had been a long one; but it now appeared to him that the labour of it had not been wholly in vain. For around him stretched a breezy common, broken by straggling bramble and furze brakes, and dotted with hawthorn bushes, upon the topmost branches of which the crowded pinkish-white blossoms still lingered. From one to another small birds flitted with a pretty dipping flight, uttering quick detached notes as in merry question and answer. Through the rough turf the bracken pushed upward, uncurling st.u.r.dy croziers of brownish green. Away to the right, beyond the railway line, rose the densely wooded slopes of Roehampton and Sheen; while, against the purple-green gloom of them, the home signals of Barnes Station--hard white lines and angles tipped with scarlet and black--stood out in high relief like the gigantic characters of some strange alphabet.

Down the wide road motors ground and snorted; and carriages moved slowly, two abreast, the menservants sitting at ease, talking and smoking while waiting to take up at the police-guarded gate, back there towards the heat and smoke of London, when the polo match should be played out.

But immediately London, the heat, and smoke, and raucous voice of it, seemed far enough away, the wholesome charm of the country very present.

For a while Dominic Iglesias yielded himself up to it. Receptive, quiescent, contented, he basked in the suns.h.i.+ne, his mind vacant of definite thought. But for a while only. For as physical fatigue wore off, definite thought returned; and with it the sense of his own loneliness, the oppression of a future empty of work, the bitterness of this enhanced by the little disappointment he had lately suffered. He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, looking at the bracken croziers pus.h.i.+ng bravely upward through the rough turf to air and light. Even these blind and speechless things worked, in a sense, fulfilling the law of their existence. He went back on the dream of last night, on his own childhood, the happiness, yet haunting unspoken anxiety of it, his father's fanaticism, fierce revolutionary propaganda, and mysteriously uncertain fate.

"And to think that was the pit out of which I, of all men, was digged!"

he said to himself. "Have I done something to restore the family balance in respect of right reason, or is the shame of incapacity upon me? Have I sacrificed myself, or cowardly have I merely s.h.i.+rked living? Heaven knows--I don't, only----"

But here his uncheerful meditations were broken in on by a voice, imperative in tone, yet perceptibly shaken by laughter.

"Cappadocia!" it called. "Cappadocia! Do you hear? Come here, you little reprobate."

Then Dominic Iglesias perceived that he had ceased to be sole occupant of the bench. A dog, a tiny toy spaniel, sat beside him. It sidled very close, gazing at him with foolishly prominent eyes. Its ears, black edged with tan, soft and l.u.s.trous as floss silk, hung down in long lappets on either side its minute and melancholy face. The tip of its red tongue just showed. It was abnormally self-conscious and solemn. It planted one fringed paw upon Iglesias' arm and it snored.

"Cappadocia!--well, of all the cheeky young beggars----"

This time the voice broke in unmistakable merriment, wholly spontaneous, as of relief, even of mischievous triumph; and Mr. Iglesias, looking up, found himself confronted by a young woman. She advanced slowly, her trailing string-coloured lace skirts gathered up lazily in one hand.

About her shoulders she wore a long blue-purple silk scarf, embroidered with dragons of peac.o.c.k, and scarlet, and gold. These rather violent colours found repet.i.tion in the nasturtium leaves and flowers that crowned her lace hat, the wide brim of which was tied down with narrow strings of purple velvet, gipsy fas.h.i.+on, beneath her chin. Under her arm she carried another tiny spaniel, the creature's black morsel of a head peeping out quaintly from among the forms of the embroidered dragons, which last appeared to writhe, as in the heat of deadly conflict, as their wearer moved. Her face was in shadow owing to the breadth of the brim of her hat. Otherwise the suns.h.i.+ne embraced her whole figure, conferring on it a glittering yet singularly unsubstantial effect, as though a column of pale windswept dust were overlaid, here and there, with splendour of rich enamel.

And it was just this effect of something unsubstantial, in a way fict.i.tious and out of relation to sober fact, which struck Dominic Iglesias, robbing him for the moment of his dignified courtesy. Frankly he stared at this appearance, so strangely at variance with the realities of his own melancholy thought. Meanwhile the little dog snuggled up yet closer against him.

"Yes--pray don't disturb yourself," the young lady went on volubly "It's too bad, I know, to intrude on you like this. But as Cappadocia refuses to come to me, it is clear I have to come after Cappadocia. It's simply disgraceful the way she carries on when one takes her out, making acquaintances like this, casually, all over the place. The maids flatly refuse to air her, even on a string. They say it becomes a little too compromising. But, as I explain to them, she's not a bit the modern woman. She belongs to a stage of social development when pretty people infinitely preferred being compromised to being squelched." The speaker laughed again quietly. "I'm not altogether sure they weren't right. When you are squelched, finished, done for, it matters precious little whether you've been compromised first or not. Don't you agree? Any way, Cappadocia's not going to be squelched if she can help it. She's horribly scared, or pretends to be, at motors. Let one toot and she forgets all her fine-lady manners, and just skips to anybody for protection. She'll take refuge in the most unconventional places to escape."

The part of wisdom, in face of this very forthcoming young person, would have been no doubt to arise and withdraw. But to Dominic Iglesias, just then, dogs, woman, conversation, were alike so remote and unreal, part merely of the scene which he had been contemplating, that he failed to take them seriously. Divorced from routine, he was divorced, in a way, from habitual modes of mind and conduct. He neither consented nor refused, but just let things happen, attaching little or no meaning to them. If this feminine being chose to prattle--well, let her do so.

Really he did not care.

"I am not very modern myself," he said, with a shade of weariness. "So perhaps your small dog had some intuition of a kindred spirit when taking refuge with me."

"All the same, you hardly date from the social era of Charles II., I fancy," the young lady answered quickly.

As she spoke she raised her chin with a slightly impudent movement, thus bringing her countenance into the sunlight. For the first time Iglesias clearly saw her face. It was small, the features insignificant, the skin smooth and fine in texture, but sallow. Her hair, black and very ma.s.sive, was puffed out and dressed low, hiding her ears. Her lips were rather positively red, and the tinge of colour on either cheek, though slight, was not wholly convincing in tone. Even to a person of Mr. Iglesias'

praiseworthy limitation of experience in such matters, her face was vaguely suggestive of the footlights--would have been distinctly so but for her eyes. These were curiously at variance with the rest of her appearance. They belonged to a quite other order of woman, so to speak--a woman of finer physique, of higher intelligence, possibly of n.o.bler purposes. They were arrestingly large in size, thereby helping to dwarf the proportions of her face. In colour they were a rather light warm hazel, with a slight film over both iris and pupil, and a noticeably bluish shade in the whites of them. In these last particulars they were like a baby's eyes; but very unlike in the reflective intensity of their observation as she fixed them upon Dominic Iglesias.

"Cappadocia may be a fool about motors," she remarked, "but she's uncommonly shrewd in reading character. She seems to like you, to have taken you on, don't you know; and she's generally right. So I'll sit down, please. Oh! no, no, come along now"--this as Mr. Iglesias rose and made a movement to depart--"why, dear man, the very point of the whole show is that you should sit down, too."

CHAPTER V

And so it came about that the Lady of the Windswept Dust sat at one end of the flat bench and Dominic Iglesias at the other, with the two absurd and exquisite little dogs in between. And the lady chattered. Her voice was sweet and full, with plaintive tones and turns of laughter in it; and, though the vowel sounds were not wholly impeccable, having the tang in them common to the speech of the c.o.c.kney bred, the aspirates happily remained inviolate. And Iglesias listened, still with a curious indifference, as, sitting in the body of the house, he might have listened to patter from the other side of the footlights. It pa.s.sed the time. Presently he would get up, taking the whole of his rather sorrowful personality along with him, and go out by the main entrance, while she left by the stage door--and so vanished, little dogs and all.

"It's my habit to play fair," she announced. "If I'm going to ask personal questions at the finish, I always lead up to them by supplying personal information at the start. It's mean to induce other people to give themselves away unless you give yourself away first--also, I observe it is usually quite unsuccessful. Well, then, to begin with, his name"-- she gently poked the tiny spaniel beside her, causing it to wriggle uneasily all the length of its satiny back--"is Onions. Graceful and distinguished, isn't it? But I give you my word I couldn't help myself.

Cappadocia's so d.u.c.h.essy that I had to knock the conceit out of her somehow, or it would not have been possible to live with her. She was altogether too smart for me--used to look at me as if I was a c.o.c.kroach.

So I consulted a friend of mine about it; for it's a little too much to be made to feel like a black-beetle in your own house, and by a thing of that size, too! And he--my friend--said there is nothing to compare with a _mesalliance_ for taking the stuffing out of anyone. I own I was not exactly off my head about that speech of his. In a way it was rather a facer; but when I got cool I saw he was right. After all, he knew, and I knew--and he knew that I knew----"

The lady paused. Her voice had taken on a plaintive inflection. She looked away at the domed heads of the enormous elm trees above the range of oak palings.